Wednesday, December 9, 2009

A European-style Indoor Picnic


For the past week or two my apartment has been nearing 80 degrees. (Yesterday it was 77.7 if we want to be exact about it.) So, I figured I would take a night off from “cooking” – i.e. using my oven. I’ve been anxious to try out this recipe for Technicolor Tapenade for some time, so this was the perfect opportunity.

Technicolor Tapenade: This recipe was traditional in the regard that it included Kalamata olives blended up in a food processor, but it also called for a red pepper, yellow pepper, basil and scallions to give it a little kick. Everything was going well until I failed to notice that about a third of the olives I had put into the food processor were not pitted. This came to my attention as I heard a THUMP THUMB, GRIND noise that I knew couldn’t be right. Thankfully my food processor is small and not powerful enough to have chopped up the pits, so I was able to sift through and pull them out and then successfully keep mixing. (That certainly was a food mis-adventure, living up to the namesake of this blog.) However, my diligence was apparent later when eating the tapenade did not result in any chipped teeth – thank goodness, since I don’t have dental insurance. Score 7 out of 10.

European Picnic Goodies: I went wild at Whole Foods (the people in their cheese department are fantastically helpful!) and picked out a bunch of things that could constitute hors d’oeuvres for my picnic. They are as follows:
* Garlic and Lemon Olives
* Heirloom tomatoes with mozzarella
* Mild Brie
* Another soft cheese of which I have forgotten the name (but it was good and creamy)
* A well-aged Gruyere cheese
* Prosciutto
* Hard salami
* Tin of smoked oysters (which I liked a lot more than I expected and I no longer fear recipes that call for their inclusion)
* Fuji apple
* Seedless grapes
* Bottle of German Riesling
* And of course, a French baguette

As anticipated, the meal was fantastically delicious and fun to sit around and pick at for a few hours while watching movies.

Overall meal score: 9 out of 10.

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